A Berry Home Catastrophe Read online

  “Dan, I’m not hearing any problems I can fix so far. The only thing you’ve done is tell me about a problem you fixed on your own.”

  “Yeah, but…”—he shrugged—“I thought you’d like to know what’s been going on.”

  Petulant child Dan was on his way to making an appearance.

  I mimicked his posture by leaning back in my chair and crossing my arms… under my chest. His eyes flicked down from my face before returning to my silent stare, one that said, “Yep, this is what you lost.”

  I was now the one girl in the world he could never have… again. I hoped it kept him up at night.

  “Get on with it, Dan. I’m not your commiseration buddy.”

  “Right. Yeah, sorry.” He sat up and leaned forward with his arms on the table. “We’ve been losing clients, Kye. We missed some deadlines, had to pay some penalties, a contract renewal renegotiation fell through, and then Rogerton & Smith headhunted my top two system analysts and my top on-site project manager.”

  I sat up and put my arms on the table, just like him. Suddenly I was interested in what he had to say. Rogerton & Smith had been our fiercest competitor. They were ruthless, and had tried to undercut us on every contract we’d won. If they saw a way to sabotage the company, they’d take it.

  “They’ve been running a negative word-of-mouth campaign against us, Kye,” Dan went on. He knew he had me, knew I was interested. “And I know we screwed up some orders early on, but this new office manager is on it. Sharp as a tack. But we’ve still had parts orders come in late or with the wrong item. It’s messing up schedules, and we’ve lost three contracts just since you left. Big ones.”

  “You think they could have someone at a couple of the major parts suppliers that they’re paying to mess up your orders?”

  “I don’t know.” Dan’s expression grew thoughtful. “Could be. It’s weird, Kye. We weren’t having these problems before. It’s like Rogerton & Smith saw a weakness and implemented some master plan. Everything that could go wrong is going wrong. And I’ve double-checked the order requests on our end to make sure it’s not an in-house problem. I’ve caught a few mistakes, but nothing major. Nothing that would have had an impact on the completion schedules.”

  “Okay, so step one, identify the specific parts distributors that you’re getting incorrect orders from and ask them to assign an oversight person to our orders. Talk to the company president to make it happen if you’ve got to.”

  Dan looked uncomfortable. I was describing the type of negotiation that I used to do. Though Dan was all charm in-person, he hated trying to influence people over the phone. I suspected that was because phone conversations never went quite as smoothly or worked as well for him, and the resulting outcome tended to bruise his ego.

  I decided to amend my suggestion. “You could give this new office manager a crack at it first, but if the problem gets pushed to the company president, it would be better if you were the one making the call.”

  Dan nodded. It was clear he didn’t like what I was saying, but he was accepting it.

  “And what about ads? You said that you’ve lost some contracts and that Rogerton & Smith was running a word-of-mouth campaign against you. You doing any ad spend? What are you doing to forge new business relationships?”

  Dan again looked uncomfortable. Again, everything I was talking about were tasks that I had done for the company.

  “Dan, you can do this. And… if you can’t, then you have to hire someone to do it for you.”

  “I slept with Michelen’s wife,” Dan blurted out. Michelen was the president of one of Hibbert Air’s biggest clients.

  My mouth fell open. It felt like I’d just been slapped. I shouldn’t have to relive all of this all over again. It was too unfair.

  “He told Moorland what I’d done and Moorland had already been suspicious of his wife cheating on him.”

  “You slept with Moorland’s wife, too?”

  Dan nodded. His eyes held layers of regret, fear, sadness… and maybe even a touch of loneliness.

  I thought I might hurl. Nausea was spreading through my entire body, but I did my best to keep the tears from filling my eyes.

  Behind Dan, the café’s door burst open, and Zoey came barreling in with Brad and Joel hot on her heels. They didn’t say a word. They didn’t even let the door close. They all just stood and stared. Brad and Joel wore deep frowns. Zoey wore a giddy smile.

  Joel tapped Brad’s shoulder and the three of them hot-footed it back outside.

  Dan hadn’t noticed, and I refocused my attention on him.

  “I don’t have any advice for fixing that,” I said. My voice stayed even and strong. No quaver at all.

  The wheels in my brain turned, the fog of pain lifted from my head, and I regained my center. “Well, no, that’s not true. I do have some advice. Get a frontman. Get a PR person who will shake hands and rub elbows and you stay out of it. Don’t go to the fancy parties and big charity galas to network. Send someone else. Take your face—take you—out of the equation as far as clients are concerned.”

  Dan jerked his head back, like I’d struck him. “Kye…”

  I was asking him to give up the one thing that he loved best about running Hibbert Air. Not only did he love it best, he did it better than anyone I’d ever seen.

  “Dan, you’re the rotten apple in the barrel. You have to remove yourself or you’ll spoil everything. You’ll lose everything.” My nausea surged as I said he’d lose it all. It was so unfair that I was helping him hold onto the company he’d forced me out of.

  I put both hands on the table. His time was up, and I had long ago already given him too much of myself. I started to push my chair back so that I could stand up, and Dan reached for my arm. His huge hand wrapping around my wrist sent electric currents through my entire body, and I froze.

  The café door burst open again, and this time it was Dorothy—Dan’s aunt—who led the charge. Joel, Brad and Zoey followed in her footsteps, and this time they all wore huge smiles on their faces.

  I yanked my wrist free of Dan’s grasp.

  “Daniel Michael Hibbert!” Dorothy screeched. She’d planted her feet shoulder-width apart and, even with her cell phone buzzing and chiming in her hand, she propped her tight fists on her hips. She had never approved of Dan’s relationship with me. She’d cried at our wedding. Great, piteous, mournful wails.

  Dan ducked his head as if dodging a head slap before slowly twisting around in his seat. “Aunt Dorothy,” he said. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “You’ll be out now!” Dorothy jabbed a finger toward the floor as if calling him front and center before her.

  “Aunt Dorothy…” Dan said. This time his tone dropped lower. It was a warning for her to back off.

  “Don’t you Aunt Dorothy me!” She marched forward, grabbed Dan by the ear and lifted him out of his seat. He followed, stumbling after wherever she took his ear, and where she took his ear was toward the front door. Before she reached it, Dan managed to yank his ear loose from her grasp. He stood up straight with his hand covering it.

  “Aunt Dorothy—”

  She cut him off as she stepped up to him, close enough that there was almost no space between them. “Jennifer Malory Higgins,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

  They stood in a stalemate, each doing his or her best to stare the other down.

  Finally, Dan turned to me. “We’ll finish this later,” he said and headed for the door before I could quip back that our time was done. The consultation session had closed. We were done… I was done.

  Dan headed out the door, passing in front of Brad and Joel as he went. They were both standing with arms crossed and shoulders close together, looking like cats who ate the canary. Smug and gloating didn’t begin to cover it.

  Dorothy followed Dan out the door without once looking my way, and then, thankfully, Brad and Joel followed.

  The only one left was Zoey.

  She sauntered over to where I sat, loo
king more than a little bit smug herself.

  She sat down in the chair Dan had vacated. “So who’s Jennifer Malory Higgins?” she asked.

  I slumped down in my chair. “I haven’t got a clue.”

  5

  “I’m not going to get involved this time. I won’t do it!”

  Zoey’s grin grew. She wasn’t buying one word coming out of my mouth. “He either fell from inside of your building or off the roof of your building,” she said. “He wouldn’t have had time to go up in a hot air balloon or a plane between when we saw him in here and when he went splat.”

  I cringed and glanced with concern in the direction where I knew Hank’s body lay. In the few seconds of life our paths had crossed, he’d been an upbeat and happy guy. Now he was dead.

  “Sorry,” Zoey said. “My empathy meter gets wonky sometimes.”

  I waved a hand in dismissal of Zoey’s concern. “I get it. We didn’t know him and we’ve gotten into the habit of butting in to figure this stuff out.” I shook my head and refocused on Zoey. “I don’t get it. How would he have gotten on the roof? I don’t even know how to get on the roof.” I sat back in my chair, crossed my arms and stared out the window in Hank’s direction. “He had to have fallen out of one of the windows from the other storefronts in this building.”

  Zoey didn’t say anything, which got my attention faster than if she had.

  “What?”

  She still didn’t say anything.

  “I’m not getting involved!”

  The café’s door chimed, and Brad came in. In his crisp, seemingly tailor-cut dark blue uniform, he was the picture of perfection. There was something about the fit of his uniform that was a glorious combination of straight lines and angles.

  “Detective Gregson wants to see your roof,” Brad said. My heart skipped a beat. I was being pulled into the murder after all. “Want me to take care of it?”

  “Really?” My voice went up two octaves from my eagerness at remaining uninvolved.

  “Yeah,” Brad said, smiling. “I’ve got it covered.”

  My knight in shining armor.

  Brad left, and I turned to Zoey. My grin was so big that it was turning painful. “See, he’s got it covered.”

  “Humph,” Zoey said and rolled her eyes. “We’ll see about that.” She got up and headed for the door.

  “Zoey, what are you going to do?” I called after her, but she wasn’t listening. “Zoey!” But it was no good. She was out the door. “That girl is gonna be the death of me.”

  The rest of the day went off without a hitch. I’d thought that business would drop off, but it was just the opposite. People were brimming with morbid curiosity, and they wandered into the café in groups of three, four and five. It was a younger crowd than what I was used to: the college crowd. When a professor brought in his entire class of twenty-two students, I considered throwing them back out. If the café had been filled with my usual clientele, I would have, because the students went around from table to table interviewing my customers. From what I gathered, it was either a psychology or sociology class. They didn’t even order any food.

  When I’d almost had enough of them, the professor approached me at the grill counter. He was handsome in an unconventional way. His face was slender and it plus his nose were very long. He had short wavy black hair, with dark skin, and seemed close to six feet tall.

  “I’m sorry about this,” he said. “These real-world events come along so seldom in a way that can be studied firsthand.” The words flowed forth like liquid poetry off of his tongue. His accent was gorgeous. I guessed him to be somewhere between thirty and forty-five. His deeply golden skin was so flawless that I couldn’t narrow it down any better than that.

  I was still pretty irked by his students pestering my customers, but one glance at my customers told me that they were as into talking about the current “world events” as the students interviewing them.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Please don’t make a habit of it, but it’s okay today.”

  “I completely understand. I’m Professor Garcia, but please call me Julius.” He extended a hand to shake, and I accepted.

  “Kylie Berry… Kylie.”

  Julius put his hand over his heart. “My humblest gratitude for allowing my students so much latitude. And please, I would like to buy cookies and pastries for the class. They’re all penniless students, and it’s the least I can do for your gracious hospitality.”

  This was his lucky day! I’d been cooking up all of Patty’s leftover cookie dough as an easy offering to all the lookie-loos. I sent him and his class on their way with no less than fifty-six cookies—an assortment of macadamia nut, shortbread, sugar cookies, double chocolate fudge, and coconut macaroons—plus fourteen cups of coffee.

  I let the day wear on a bit before kicking the last of the stragglers out early. People were there to gawk more than to buy, and I could use some extra time to unwind.

  6

  “Jacques, don’t let that garlic burn! Pierre, what are you doing? The peas are turning to mush! Antoine, the sauce, man. The sauce! It’s bubbling over!”

  I woke from my dream of being the head chef in a Michelin starred French restaurant during the middle of a hopping dinner service, but the sensory details of the dream lingered. I rubbed at my nose to chase away the scent memory of delicious food being cooked to perfection, but nothing changed.

  “Sage? Sage, where are you?” I called out. My bedroom door was ajar, and a soft glow of light was filtering through the opening. But I hadn’t left any lights on in the apartment. Sage was such a feisty kitten. I could imagine her jumping for an imaginary moth and flipping a light switch. But… that didn’t explain why my nose was still being tickled by the amazing aroma of something delectable.

  “Sage, please have learned how to cook,” I whispered as I crawled my way off of my floor mattress before climbing to my feet. I was wearing a sleep shirt that went a quarter of the way down my thighs and had my hair put up in pin curls. Sage was not in her usual spot of curled up on top of me or next to me.

  I went to my bedroom door and inched it open. More light flooded in along with a wave of scents so wonderful that I thought I must still be dreaming. Why was something so amazing coming from my kitchen?

  Getting braver, I peeked my head out the door and looked down the long hallway. Sure enough, light was pouring out from my kitchen.

  I tiptoed back into my room and found my spikiest, scariest stiletto shoe. Then brandishing it as a weapon by holding it up near my shoulder, I crept back out into the hallway and toward the kitchen. Halfway there, a low hum reached my ears. The melody was haunting… but not menacing, and despite my need to find out who was in my kitchen, I stopped and leaned against the wall to listen.

  The hum soon changed to words, and a rich, soft tenor filled the space between us. “And I’m in too deep, I’m such a fool for you. You got me wrapped around your finger. Around your little finger.” The humming returned to pick up where the words left off.

  “Matt’s Band,” I whispered. It was their song “Linger.”

  All sound except for that of a sizzle ceased.

  “Berry?”

  That was Brad’s voice! But not being completely sure of myself, I inched toward the corner of the hall and peeked around it in order to see inside the kitchen.

  Relief flooded me, and I released a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. It was Brad, dressed in an open blue button-up shirt over a white T. He looked as good—okay, better than he ever had, and his eyes were on me.

  “‘Bout time you woke up. The steaks are almost done. Come on. Sit.”

  No hello, how are you, or even an explanation as to why he had broken into my apartment in the middle of the night. At least I knew how he’d broken in. He still had a key that Sarah had given him, one that he’d refused to give back.

  I inched my way around the corner into full view. Brad’s gaze flicked from me to the stiletto shoe that I still had held up
at shoulder height. I’d forgotten about it.

  Brad’s wonderful lips stretched in a lazy grin. “Hey,” he said with a shrug, “I thought we’d keep it casual, but if you wanna put those on, I won’t complain.” His eyes fell downward toward my bare legs. I was sure that they were hidden from his sight by the kitchen counter, but the heat in his eyes had me shyly crossing them nonetheless.

  I dropped the shoe to my side before self-consciously slipping it behind my back to hold it with both hands. I wanted to give Brad a hard time about what he thought he was doing breaking into my apartment, but whatever he had on the stove had me second-guessing my desire to complain.

  “Sit,” Brad said again as he started to plate the food.

  “What’d you make?”

  “Sit and I’ll tell you.”

  “I don’t have anywhere to sit.” There was no use denying it. He’d been in my apartment before, just like he was now. He knew I didn’t have any chairs. When I moved to Kentucky, I came with every belonging I had, and they had all fit into one modestly-sized suitcase. The only reason I had a mattress was because my cousin Sarah—whose apartment this had been—hadn’t taken it with her.

  Brad abandoned the food and came around the corner of the kitchen counter. He stopped when I came into full view, and I desperately wished that my sleep shirt were several inches longer. It would have been the perfect length in the sixties, with their micro miniskirts, but we weren’t in the sixties and I wasn’t Goldie Hawn.

  Brad’s hesitation only lasted a moment before he took my hand and led me around to the cook side of the kitchen counter. When he stopped and stepped in front of me––his body close enough to get in trouble at a middle school dance––I forgot about everything but the two of us. The promise of yummy food evaporated from my thoughts. My objections to him showing up unannounced and uninvited disappeared, and even my shoe fell to the floor at my feet.

  There was a moment, the briefest pause as he looked down at me, when indecision stole the usual cocky certainty from his soft blue and green flecked eyes. But the moment was fleeting, and the Brad I knew was back with a lopsided grin.